The Hitchhiker War
by Lord Dave
Summary: I decided to do events after book 6. Done to death? Maybe, but not like this.(It's actually somewhat probable)


**The Hitchhiker War**

The universe we live in is a large and rather complex place. An infinite number of possibilities can occur at any moment. Because of this, an infinite number of universes exist to account for every possibility. These universes existed in the space-time-probability coordinate system. Earth was in the ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha galactic sector. In every universe, the Earth exists in the same spot. Our universe exists on the 1 to 587366.582 probability point in the multi-verse. This of course is not widely known. Most races that discover that there is more than one universe out there are so boggled by the possibilities that they generally ignore it. This isn't to say that there are still those races that don't mess with it anyway.

**Chapter 1**

Starring out a window, a woman sighed. She sighed because of the empty space she was currently starring at. To the right of her vision, she could dimly see a red dot and to the left, a yellow one. At about 93 million miles from the yellow sun she had expected to find a medium sized, blue green planet. It wasn't there.

"Is there any where else I can take you miss?"

The woman thought about this and came up with the answer, "Can you take me to Alpha Centauri?"

"Sure."

The woman stared out into the inky blackness once more before they shot off into hyperspace.

"Oh Arther, where are you?" she whispered to herself.

She was named after the place she was conceived, Fenchurch Station, Earth. Fenchurch had been on the slumpjet with Arther when he had suddenly disappeared after the jump to hyperspace. No sign of him ever being there was found. His bags were gone and his name wasn't even on the passenger list. After complaining about this incident to the local offices, they simply told her that anyone originally from sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha were not advised to travel in hyperspace.

Having no useful currency and very limited knowledge of hitchhiking, she took a job at a local fast food restaurant called _Granix-Ulas. _ She managed to scrape out a living with her paycheck, renting a small room above the restaurant. For 6 months she questioned every traveler she saw; trying to find a hitchhiker among them. She had hoped to use her charm to tag along and hopefully get back to earth. Unfortunately, very few transports came into that particular planet and when they did, the transport pilots usually didn't like hitchhikers.

However, on a particular day, a man walked up to the counter and asked for a 'Guelch'. Fenchurch was about to ask him if he wanted zeche slugs with that, then stopped, noticing the large towel wore like a sash. Looking over to the left, she also noticed a satchel and in the right hand was a copy of the most useful book to all hitchhikers, _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy._

His name was Mencur Kihed. He had set the record for hitchhiking the length of the galaxy. He had even managed to persuade a Vogon to give him a lift 3 light-years. He was also know as 'Thumb' because he is considered the best hitchhiker to ever live.

Fenchurch began to remember Mencur. He had a tall, commanding stature, much like an impressive statue; Neatly parted, black hair that gave the impression that he never slept on anything except very expensive pillows; and the most impressive array of towels any hitchhiker would be proud to own. He had towels soaked in nutrients, towels with computers sewn into them, even a towel that was super absorbent to any liquid substance. From that day on, he had trained her in the ways of hitchhiking. She was a fast learner and within a matter of a year, had learned everything a well traveled hitchhiker knew, such as how to build an emergency beacon, the best food to eat on any alien world, and the importance of a towel.

When she left, he had presented her with a copy of the guide, a towel, and a satchel. It has taken her 3 years to get where she sat now; a local transport owned by Jetare Shonu of Bernard Star. He had told her of the destruction of the earth, but she still wanted to see for herself.

She also wanted to see Arther again. The only thing she had of him was a picture she had taken before they left the God's final message to his creations.

Still, she wasn't going to give up hope. She was determined to get answers and the best place to look, she thought, was the local planning office.

**Chapter 2**

Zaphod Beeblebrox had been to a lot of places, but none, he thought, was even remotely close to this one. He was currently walking though a field of blue orange flowers. The sky above him was a clear yellow and the red sun in the sky didn't hurt his eyes if he looked at it. This wasn't what bothered him about the planed though. It was the forest ahead that gave him trouble. Hundreds of small bipedal creatures, no bigger than Zaphod's leg, were running away from the large billowing column of smoke that arose from the trees. The scene reminded Zaphod of a heard of wild cujas stampeding from some natural disaster. Unfortunately, the small bipedal creatures were quickly being eaten by their natural predator, the openzi trees.

Using the better part of his judgment, caution, he waited until the stampeed of creatures had run though, or been eaten. When the supply of frightened creatures had been emptied, Zaphod slowly made his way into the forest, ready to shoot the flesh eating openzi trees if they tried anything.

It took a hour and several shots to make it to the small village that was currently on fire. Zaphod hated these missions the most. Sure the money was good, but the personal danger he faced wasn't appealing.

Still, he thought, 'if Trillian hadn't left me'.

In the center of the village was a large temple dedicated to the god Loinuja.

Loinuja is a god, worshiped by the ritne of urgefer 6. The current ritne villagers had fled when the fires started. While the ritne thought the fires and the strange lights from the sky had been a punishment from Loinuja, Zaphod knew better. High in orbit, a very large and black ship sat. Its goal was to retrieve the same artifact that Zaphod was being paid to get. The artifact in question was a trans-warp star distorter. It could instantly distort the many different variables of a star, such as gravity, energy output, size, ect. The device had crashed here when the ship carrying it was attacked by pirates long ago. Never actually used, it was still sought after. Zaphod didn't care who had it, just as long as he got paid.

Slowly he crept into the ruined temple. Rounding a corner, he spotted what he had hoped wasn't there, three very heavily armed men with Kill-O-Zap rifles. Not merely meant to kill, but to put several holes in the victim too. Using the element of surprise, he leapt out from the shadow of a pillar and fired, killing one of the blackly dressed men.

He ducked and rolled, avoiding the return fire, and hid himself behind another pillar. The men shot at the pillar, completely forgetting the briefing they had had hours before. The electric shots rebounded back and melted the rifles. The rock had a high concentration of debiezian crystals in them. As a result, ordinary kill-o-zap weapons were a hazard to use. That is why the ship had to destroy the temple from orbit rather than let their retrieval team do it. A look of absolute stupidity was shown on their face as Zaphod used this opportunity to swing back out from around the pillar and kill the them.In a matter of hours he was back on the Heart of Gold, traveling to hurion 8, where his client waited for his package.

Zaphod has started his little recovery business after his trial for theft of the Heart of Gold. He had gotten out of prison by simply telling the truth about why he did it: that he wanted to meet the man who ruled the universe and therefore operated on himself so he would achieve his goal without knowing what it was. The judge accepted this plea and therefore threw out the case. Zaphod had even been able to convince the judge to let him keep the ship on the basis that theft is possession and he therefore was the rightful possessor of the ship since he stole it.

All this was, of course, after Trillian left him.

She had wanted a child. He understood that.

She wanted to do something with her life. He understood that too.

Then she had wanted him to do something too. That was where he had the problem.

In the end, she left him and went on with her career, carrying her daughter, random, with her. He was grief stricken when he learned of her disappearance. No one knew what happened. Her space-time tracker either wasn't working or was destroyed. Either way, Trillian was lost and the networks had to replace her.

That's when Zaphod turned himself in. He doesn't regret that decision, even if it was out of grief and loneliness.

When Zaphod arrived at hurion 8, a man, no bigger than 4 feet, greeted him. This was his client, Mr. Bricarc.

"I trust there were to problems Mr. Beeblebrox."

"None. Althepian guards are just too stupid to offer any true challenge." Zaphod displayed all the arrogance of a man telling a fantastic story of courage, strength, and skill, that he wishes he was in.

"Excellent. Your fee has been transferred to your account." Bricarc turned and began walking away with his prized possession.

"I'll be sure to call you again if I need anything else 'recovered'." Bricarc added moments before the landing port doors closed behind him.

Zaphod, pleased that he was now 1 million Artairian dollars richer, left with a smile on both faces. But the smiles didn't last. Even though he was very successful in his business, he still felt the constant pinprick of loneliness. He didn't even have Marvin there anymore. He did, however, change the computer's personality.

"Computer," he said, "what is my next mission?"

The computer, formally known as Eddie, was now less talkative and more productive, just the way Zaphod liked. It also handled the negotiation end of his business.

"No new contracts made."

"Good." said Zaphod. "Let's go on a vacation."

The ship winked itself out of existence at an improbability factor high enough to cause a comet in the vicinity to begin traveling though universes as well as space; in other words, a very high one.

**Chapter 3**

Fenchurches' eyes began to hurt. She had been starring at the same computer screen for 3 hours and it didn't have a contrast control. Of course she wasn't going to stop now, especially since she had to get all the information she could before she was caught. Hacking through the security system and gaining access to the observation files at the local planning department on Alpha Centauri wasn't hard. She had spent 3 months with an information acquirer for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

An information acquirer was a very profitable occupation that required impressive skill. What they do is this: they steal information from wherever they are paid to do it. Ever since the galactic council had received hundreds of complaints about company espionage, usually for both sides, they simply decided to solve the problem by making it legal thereby stopping the complaints and creating a field of employment. This new job required the skills only those who have no life and insist on breaking into government files to prove some kind of weird conspiracy. "We like keeping our conspiracies to ourselves" said the galactic president at the time, Zaphod Beeblebrox.

The hardest part was finding what you wanted. In the case of The Earth, this had been a nearly impossible task. The database was the most disorganized system she had ever seen. Folders and icons connected to things that had nothing to do with what they said they did. Obviously this particular department didn't have much to do and the database was littered with strange alien pornography. Finally, littered in a directory 'rootfirzer's stuffnew stuffimportaint station reportsnoname' she found what she was looking for. Most of it was just as Arther had said. A plan was put out over 50 years ago to demolish the earth. Then 7 years ago, it was destroyed. However, according to data, it came back. It said that the dolphins had sponsored a 'save the humans' fund and had gained enough finances to build a temporial restore system.

A temporial restore system is a remarkable device. Once planted in another space-time continuum, it scans its maximum area of its target space-time continuum and makes a backup copy of its temporial condition. Then, if it finds something catastrophic happens on it's next scan, such as a planet blowing up, it simply replace what it needs to with the temporial backup, thereby keeping a nice preserve of the system. This device affected not only the whole sector, but all of the multi-verse as well, causing every single planet in the ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha galactic sector in the whole probability continuum to become, basically, un-destroyable, causing significant annoyance to Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz in about 9 billion different universes.

All of this was, of course, in the file Fenchurch was currently reading. Finally, she saw what she wanted to see, the final report on the Earth. It was Jeltz's final report.

Assignment: Demolition of Earth

Date of accomplishment: 25874.448 gt

Statement: After years of trying thanks to those damn dolphins, I have successfully destroyed the earth and bypassed the temporial backup system with the assistance of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, mark II. Currently returning to Bernard star for refit.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz

"Guide mark II?" though Fenchurch. She tried to do some research on this, but she go nothing. Disappointed, she read the final entry on the earth by junil oged, which read "And good riddance." This caused a stab of anger to hit Fenchurches heart. Although she had accepted the fact that the Earth was gone, she still didn't like seeing it insulted. Before she left, she copied all the information onto disk, then installed a very nasty computer virus that reorganized the whole galactic panning department across 3 sectors. This virus scanned every file and put it into the correct sub-folder. The order given to the main galactic system not only caused extreme panic, but it took weeks to put it back to dis-order.

She left with a smile that made everyone around her nervous.

**Chapter 4**

The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is a wonderfully remarkable book. It's sold millions of copies and had numerous updates. Still, it's just a book. Seeing the problems with production and marketing, the currupt but brilliantly currupt leaders of the guide had designed and built a new guide. A bird like object that had no perception filters. It could affect the past, see the future, ect. It is, in essence, the most usefull thing a hitchhiker could have. For example, says the brocure, if you want to get a lift from where you are to alger-anteri the guide would make sure that a transport was there waiting for you. It would, say, place an order in the past, which would require the transport to travel to alger-anteri. This of course would be considered cheating by most. If you didn't need to actally flag someone down, or rough it until you got a ride, then obviously all sorts of ju-jus(people who want to be hitchhikers because they think it's froothy) would be hitchhiking. The real brilliance to it though, was that the new guide could exist in all universes. This ment that only one universe needed to make them, then all the universes could have them.

"Sure, we could market to just one reality, but 5 billion of the same person buying our product across the muli-verse is much more profitable." said the Guid's spokesman

The only delay was the proto-type. Ford prefect had stolen it and it was now enacting it's own agenda. The Guide had attempted to recover it, but to no avail. It jumps from person to person depending on who it needs. Plus since it can see events before they happen and make certain events happen by affecting the past, it was impossible to capture.

In universe probabiltiy coordinate 112876542.23, Ford Prefect sat in his office. His hair was flat and neatly combed. His feet were placed on his oragian oak desk and a cigar was in his mouth. Ford had, 20 years ago, declined a trip to investigate earth. Instead he decided to work in the office. Using twisted and almost illegal actions, he rose to the top and now rules The Guide as an unimpeachable president. While it's not that he can't be impeached, it's more that anyone trying meets several sharply dressed men and are found dead later that day. Ford liked his job, but he was alarmed at the report he had just recieved. Someone in another universe had created a new version of the Guide and was now taking orders through-out the multi-verse. This spelled trouble. Ford had sent out 14 of his best 'respectable business associates' as they liked to be called, but only 1 returned, and that was because he got sick from the trip through dimensions. Ordinarely these things were usually totally fabricated by competition to scare him, but when the Earth suddenly vanished, he got worried. His dark, currupt inuition told him that something bad had happened, and that he didn't cause it. What also upset him was that his beloved secratary, Trillian, had dissapeared. While he had no emotional attatchment, she did do her job quite well. He was actally forced to get his own coffee for a day before a replacement could be found. He shot the coffee machine that day too.

"Zeran. Come here." Ford buzzed through his intercomm.

A young woman in her early 20's with sharp, purple skin and green eyes walked into Ford's office carrying the foot massager 3000.

"No, not today Zerna. I need to you to take a company wide memo."

Zerna noded, put the massager down and took out a note pad and pen.

"Now", said Ford, "To all hitchhikers, be on the look out for any information you may find on 'the Hitchhikers guilde to the galaxy mark 2'. Any information is to be reproted to me, Ford Prefect, controller of the guide."

Zerna copied this down. "Will that be all Mr. Prefect?"

"Yes." said Ford. Zerna turned and walked out leaving Ford in his own thoughts again.

'Why didn't I think of a new version?' he thought.


End file.
